The message “wish you were here” was often as big a lie as the picture featuring azure seas and cloudless blue skies.

But despite the retouched photographs of drab resorts and sometimes insincere sentiments, the picture postcard has never been more popular.

According to the latest figures from the Royal Mail, Britons are sending about 135 million postcards each year - an increase of 30 million on just five years ago.

E-mailing and texting may have grabbed the headlines, but for many holidaymakers the picture postcard is the only way to ram home the message: “We’re having a wonderful time (and you aren’t).”

Times Archive, 1913: Censorship of postcards

The vulgarity, semi-indecency and blasphemous suggestiveness are a standing menace to the morality of our young people

• Indecent picture postcards

Related Links

• We’re here . . . and you’re not

Patrick O’Neill, a spokesman for the Royal Mail which released the figures, said: “These are huge levels. They have not been at these levels before.

“There are certain things about postcards that people like using. They are a physical connection with the recipient, unlike a text or e-mail.

“It requires a certain degree of effort to write a postcard, which means you care enough to do it.

“It is also true that people take many more holidays than they did 25 years ago. It is about people getting across that they are somewhere special.”

The rise of the postcard parallels the growth in post generally, with the Royal Mail delivering an average of 80 million items of mail a day, four times as much as 50 years ago.

Mr O’Neill added: “People have this idea in their head that it’s an old-fashioned medium but it’s not. The claim that’s often made by telecoms companies that text or picture messaging is killing the postcard simply isn’t true.”

Royal Mail’s figures came from a survey of 1,000 households that recorded every item of post that they received.

Brian Lund, editor of Picture Postcard Monthly, said: “We’ve noticed a stark increase in the number of postcards being sent over the last few years.

“Back in the early Nineties, when the internet and mobile phones took over, the number of people sending postcards dropped for obvious reasons - sending a text is easier and cheaper.

“But now people are realising that a postcard is far more thoughtful than a text message or an e-mail, and that they can be displayed for all to see in the home.

“It’s my hope that we will see a return to the glory days of the postcard in the Fifties, when sending one was all the fashion.”

Digitally enhanced images of seaside resorts are not the only big sellers. The Postcard Company sells more than 6,000 different images of movie and pop stars, as well as reproductions of classic film posters.

Simon Hunter, the company’s sales manager, said: “It depends a lot on who happens to be in vogue, but Elvis, Monroe and Audrey Hepburn are always big sellers. We have a range of over 400 Star Wars cards too that are incredibly popular.

“People buy them to send to each other or keep and there’s a growing trend of competition entrants wanting something eye-catching in the hope of being picked. If it’s a dog food contest, for example, they will buy a card of a particularly cute looking dog.”

The golden age of the postcard began in 1894 when the General Post Office, the forerunner of the Royal Mail, first approved them for delivery by post.

The first cards coincided with the explosion of interest in photography and many featured pictures of famous landmarks or scenic seaside views.

By the 1930s the black and white landscape had been overtaken in popularity by the saucy cartoon postcard featuring a risqué cartoon and a double entendre.

Collecting postcards, known as deltiology, is also growing in popularity with at least 60 clubs across Britain. The nation’s largest private collection is held by Roger Peck, a pensioner from Colchester, Essex, who owns an estimated 37,000.

Times recommends

• Croatia: the flashing blades of Korkcula
• The best stopovers en route to Australia
• Chernobyl offers a holiday in hell